house slave
Indoor forced servant
A house slave was an enslaved person who worked in the slaveholder's residence rather than in fields—cooking, cleaning, caring for children, serving meals.
The position sometimes meant better food and clothing but also constant proximity to owners and their demands.
The house slaves knew the family's secrets.
The term appears in historical discussions of slavery's internal hierarchies and, disparagingly, to accuse someone of currying favor with oppressors.
- househelpPaid household worker
- bondslavePerson owned as property
- servantOne employed to serve
- housemanMale domestic attendant
- chattelMovable personal property
human bondage · indentured servant · quarters · plantation · antebellum South · butler · laundress · domestic servant · domestic labor · lackey · Uncle Tom · exploitation · puppet · emancipation · sycophant · oppression · cook · servitude
- slaverybondage, chattel, thrall, Middle Passage, slaveholders
- Antebellum Southplantation, cotton kingdom, overseer, plantation owner, plantation economy
- Roman servantsfreedman, doorkeeper, cupbearer, chambermaid, wet nurse
- unfree laborersbondsman, bondswoman, bondservant, bondman, bondwoman
- servantsbutler, maid, servant, servants, domestics
- Slavery EscapeUnderground Railroad, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, runaways, fugitives
house slavemaster
Authority or controller
slaveholder · slave owner · mistress · plantation owner · enslaver
house, slave, houses, housed, housing, housekeeper, household, housewife, hothouse